Word: clinte
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Correspondent James Willwerth has covered war in Saigon and peace (almost as harrowing) in the streets of New York City. Last week he was on his new beat in Hollywood, but his subjects were presumably still tough: Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood. "Covering illusion, I suspect, is going to be just as confusing as reporting reality," says Willwerth. Part of the confusion came from spending a few days with Reynolds. The flashy-flip, skirt-chasing, tire-burning macho hero of Semi-Tough, and a score of other cinematic excursions, proved to be a "semi-shy, urbane homebody." It turns...
...drive-in popcorn or worse. But Contributor Richard Schickel, who wrote this week's cover story, takes a different view. Schickel, a film maker himself as well as a critic, has spent time with both men and admires them for being "non-prima donna professionals." He adds: "Clint and Burt have classic screen presences"-like John Wayne, who for 25 years lived with bad reviews despite popular adulation. Says Schickel: "I have a feeling that when Clint-or Burt-reaches 60, he'll make his version of True Grit, and critics will sit up and realize how good...
...Bookman is a blustering, stupendously stupid man; as played, the millionaire owner of a pro football team probably couldn't pass a driver's test. He has his moments--asking God in the Super Bowl if since he's a sinner, God is going to fuck him. Clint Murchison of the Cowboys has probably done that, albeit silently. It would be nice if owners were that dumb; the throwback owner of the Giants, Wellington Mara, probably is but not the Murchisons, Hunts, and Robbies of today. David Merrick depends on an abrasive charm as the Werner Erhardt figure...
Dirty Harry. It's scary to think how many Americans, from assembly-line workers to advertising men to upwardly mobile Harvard students, are addicted to these sort of one-man vigilante, "take the law into your own hands" movies. Facile sociological comments about what Clint Eastwood's popularity tells us about Americans' repressed frustrations aside, a violence-glorifying film like Dirty Harry is incredibly dangerous. Its potential impact was dramatized just a month ago when after seeing the movie on television, two young brothers in Cleveland re-enacted a gunfight scene from the film and one accidentally shot the other...
...disguises, a crazed scene with Pacino caught in a door, and the crooks inside pointing a gun at his head with the complicity of the backup officers, more blood than a hospital. Which is, well, maybe your cup of tea--much better to see Serpico battling crooked cops than Clint Eastwood murdering everybody. But the bloody scenes alternate with Serpico's home life, which is just about as boring as your uncle's. Still, great drive-in fare. Sit in the balcony and bliss out, waking up only when you gunfire...